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Eastern Europe Trip 2017

October - November 2017
A 23-day adventure by Always exploring Read more
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  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 1

    Au revoir France!

    October 16, 2017 in France ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    A day of travelling today! Train up to Paris and flight over to Romania... excited for the travels ahead!

    Just received a text from the hostel to say that instead of putting us in the 12 bed dorm we booked- we’re actually getting upgraded to our own apartment! Feeling very lucky!Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 2

    Brașov

    October 17, 2017 in Romania ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    We arrived in Bucharest late last night. Had a very warm welcome from the hostel receptionist and got shown our nice upgraded apartment for the night. Most luxury I’ve had for £6 :)

    In the morning we took a taxi back to the airport to collect our rental car- from the craziest man. He thought it was okay at 7am to blast Romanian music, drive ridiculously fast, repetitively flash his lights at anyone in his way... and all the while scrolling through Facebook and whatsapping his friends. Slightly bizarre. (See photo) I was happy to be getting out that car and have Stéphane do the driving for the next few days.

    Leaving the stressful city behind- we headed north to Braşov, passing a few fairytale Romanian castles on the way. First stop- Peles Castle which was beautiful and surrounded by lovely autumn trees. Cute little market stalls lined the way there too where we could taste some local sweets!
    After a quick lunch and power nap in the car, we got back on the road towards Bran Castle- famous as being Dracula’s Castle, in Transylvania. We wandered around there for a while which was nice and worth the visit!
    Best part of the day has to be the stunning views though. The mountains are incredible and so different surrounded by all these lovely unique Romanian villages.

    Staying in Braşov - Another lovely hostel tonight with a very friendly welcoming! We were recommended a local place for dinner which was amazing!! It’s called “La Ceaun” meaning “the cauldron”. Very home comforting granny style dishes - good bowl of soup and a mushroom pie for me, spicy cabbage rolls with polenta for Stéphane! And we had our first try at Romanian potato bread and red wine! Delicious. Stéphane finished the night off with a shot of wild pear palinca and then we went for a stroll around the city at night. Seems to be a lot going on here! Could definitely stay longer. :)    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 3

    Brasov - Sighisoara - Bucharest

    October 18, 2017 in Romania ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    Today was a very long but amazing day of travelling around Romania!

    We left Braşov at 7am and headed north to Sighisoara. There was crazy fog which meant we could hardly see the car in front of us but it soon cleared. We arrived nice and early and spent an hour walking around the cobbled streets of the lovely old town. Colourful houses everywhere- old churches and very little tourists- perfect! It was such a cute little place to walk about in the frosty cold morning.

    Back in the car to continue our long journey- we headed to the Fagaras mountains to travel on the Transfagarasan Road. This is described as the “world’s best road” by Top Gear so we couldn’t miss it while we were here! The weather got nice and warm again as we drove through lots of little villages with not much around apart from beautiful views and lots of horses and carts! It was very quiet both on the roads and in the villages.

    The journey was absolutely stunning. 140km of panoramic views as the road wrapped its way up and through the mountains. There was very little traffic on the road too meaning we had plenty chance to stop for some photos and to play in the snow!
    After realising we hadn’t ate much we stopped for a corn on the cob at the side of a big artificial lake where you could see the mountains again far in the distance.
    I had a scary/hilarious experience with a wild dog as it came running towards me. I think I overreacted a little as I ran screaming into the car- scaring the living daylights out of Stéphane who didn’t understand why I was so scared of this cute innocent looking dog standing next to the car... I swear i thought it was going to attack. 😂

    Back in the safety of our car we continued back to Bucharest which took a loooooong time. (Lots of stand still traffic- apparently quite common here) We dropped the car off at the rental, absolutely bursting for the toilet. Asked where we would find nearest toilets to which we were told “behind that car over there” - in the middle of an airport car park. Great. Thankfully I was bursting enough not to care too much!

    Managed to get a taxi ride back into Bucharest from a nice young guy who didn’t understand the concept of seat belts... but thankfully all was good with his driving!

    Finally, we checked into our hostel after such a marathon journey, and it was amazing! Very clean, modern and good showers! YAY. (It’s called 'First Hostel' for anyone planning a trip!)

    Couldn’t end the night with not much more than a corn on the cob to eat for the day and thankfully the restaurants are open late here so we headed into the old town for another authentic restaurant. Great food and wine again, and such good value! We stuffed ourselves for only about €10 each.

    So far we would highly recommend a trip to Romania! Excited to explore the capital city of Bucharest tomorrow :)    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 4

    A city tour of Bucharest...

    October 19, 2017 in Romania ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    I woke up this morning covered in mosquito bites which is never a good start to the day. But things got better as we got our walking shoes on and headed into the city centre. We started the day with a 2.5hr free guided walking tour which was amazing! Our guide was so lovely with amazing English and spoke so passionately about her country and city. I learned so much from her- all about the very recent communist history and the significance of the buildings (and lack of) around the city. If anyone reading this is planning a trip here (and you should) I would highly recommend starting the trip with this tour. :)

    After this, we spent the rest of the day walking around the city and enjoying good food and wine as usual! So that’s us almost finished with Romania for now as we are leaving for Sofia, Bulgaria tomorrow! (9.5hr train journey- eeek wish us luck!)

    But Romania, I’m sure we’ll be back!

    :)    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 5

    Crossing the border into Bulgaria

    October 20, 2017 in Bulgaria ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Mosquito bite update for the day-
    My knuckles have swollen so much they don’t really look like knuckles anymore. :/

    Oh well, moving on...

    Long journey over to Sofia today which started with another crazy taxi driver, followed by a boiling hot train. Passport control at the border was a bit strange as a man came to collect everyone’s passports and told us we would get them back tomorrow. (What a joker- we weren’t in the mood) Not long after, we arrived at the first change over where our passports were taken off us again. Everyone seemed to be handing them over so we guessed it was normal. It was quite comical hearing the Bulgarian guy read out all the names on the passports to give back though, and that killed some time!

    The second train was great! It reminded me of hogwarts express with a separate carriage for everyone. Views on the journey were nice, especially when the sun went down :) it was a 6hr journey on this train- plenty time for more travel planning, french lessons, a movie, food and WINE. Ok it was out of a paper cup which we had re-used but 'wine not'. 😏

    It’s 1am- happy to be heading to bed now for an early start to explore what’s going on in Sofia!    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 6

    Exploring Sofia for a day

    October 21, 2017 in Bulgaria ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    Today started with another free walking tour around the city. We learnt a lot about the history of this wee city. It was another beautiful day too so we spent the rest of the day just wandering about and trying some local food and wine as usual. There were a lot of vegetarian restaurants too which was a nice surprise!

    There were hundreds of police all over the city which was a bit strange but we later found out that there was a big football game on and that was why. A huge crowd of supporters walked past screaming, chanting and throwing smoke bombs and smashing bottles. Bit intimidating!

    We wandered about a random market festival that we found and smelt the most incredible smells! So good actually that we waited in line for almost 40 mins for a “chimney cake” covered in cinnamon... delicious and definitely worth the wait!!    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 7

    New day. New country.

    October 22, 2017 in North Macedonia ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Time to leave Bulgaria and cross another border into Macedonia! Thanks to gaining an extra hour with the time difference, we arrived in good time and managed to explore a little this evening. First impressions are great! Such a cute city with lots of huge monuments and statues everywhere! There is a nice centre (not too big which I like) and an old town called Bazaar with lots of bars and restaurants. There seems to be cute market stalls everywhere too.

    Unfortunately we arrived just at the end of the jazz festival but we found a great restaurant that was really chilled out and it was playing great jazz music so we spent the evening in there. We had a pretty good feast again for only €5 each! We finished the night munching on the best chocolate donuts in town (actually maybe the best in the world) from a woman who found our excitement over a donut pretty entertaining. It’s going to be a struggle not getting fat on this trip!

    Excited for another free walking tour tomorrow morning to learn about the history of this lovely city. Skopje is the birth place of Mother Teresa and there is a museum here about her so we are going to give that a go too! Seems like it will be another busy day! :)    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 8

    Touring around Skopje by the local dogs

    October 23, 2017 in North Macedonia ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Today was the first time in 20 days that we have seen rain! It just made us realise how lucky we have been so far and how easy it is to take it for granted. We didn’t let it stop us though, just got the raincoats on and out we went for the morning walking tour.

    The tour guide was great, so knowledgeable and full of beans! The best thing about the tour though was the many dogs that came along with us. [There are loads of stray dogs all over the city but they have tags on them which ensures that they have been vaccinated and have food etc. Its still sad to see but they seem happy enough and they aren’t annoying or aggressive really.] So these dogs came along on the tour and they would stop patiently at each stop and wait for us to move on. They became very protective over us too and would bark at anyone that came near the group. This included people, people on bikes and even cars. Hilarious. I couldn’t take in much of what the tour guide was saying as I was so distracted by these funny dogs!

    The guide admitted that Skopje has a bit of an obsession with statues but he explained the important ones! We got a nice view of the city too from the city fortress and the sun had come out by that point so that was lovely. You could hear the mosque chanting in the background too, felt like we could have been in the middle east. There is a huge cross up on Mt Vodno that overlooks the city. It’s twice as big as the one in Rio which I found hard to imagine as I didn’t think it looked that big!

    Skopje is another city that seems to live in harmony with lots of different religions and beliefs which I like. It seems like there is a lot of poverty though which is sad to see next to so many expensive monuments and statues. Overall though, I really liked it here! And a bonus- we found the best hostel ever that feels so homely! Free popcorn last night and free pizza tonight- can’t complain!    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 9

    Ohrid was not so horid

    October 24, 2017 in North Macedonia ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    Today we left Skopje after a quick visit to the Memorial of Mother Teresa. Skopje is where she was born and lived for 18 years, so they have a lot about her here which is interesting! We also couldn’t leave Skopje without one last visit to the best bakery for chocolate donuts so we stocked up on them for our bus journey down to Ohrid. Here in the south of Macedonia is a very picturesque little place by lake Ohrid. I liked to walk about this place, it felt like they had preserved their culture a lot (not a McDonald’s in sight!) and I loved all the little cobbled streets. We wandered around for the day, enjoying the views from the fortress. We found it very quiet here but can imagine it to be buzzing in the summer months. Maybe September would be the best time to visit? The restaurants were very quiet but this meant we got the best seats! It was very cheap to eat out so we made the most of the amazing olives and Macedonian wine! It was a bit more difficult to get vegetarian food here but we managed to find a nice Italian place.

    I would definitely recommend visiting this place if you are in Macedonia- but maybe visit when its got more atmosphere during the summer. It got so cold at night too, I guess we are pretty high up! There is nice hiking to do around here apparently, but we only chose to spend a day here as we want to get to Albania tomorrow (which you can see me point to on the photo, across the lake)!    Read more

  • TravelerEastern Europe Trip 2017
    Day 10

    Crossing our third border today

    October 25, 2017 in Albania ⋅ 🌙 11 °C

    We took the bus across to Albania this morning. Can’t comment on the views too much as I was catching up on sleep! Luckily I managed to stay awake after passport control as the views when entering Albania were stunning! We were so high up in the mountains and you could see lots of stereotypical Albanian things that we had read in the lonely planet (unfinished houses, bunkers and plenty old Mercedes Benz cars). It was all quite surreal.

    Due to having such a crappy night sleep in the hostel the previous night, we decided to splash out and get a hotel room. I say splash out but it only cost us €15 each and it was luxury!! Albania is very cheap. We also went out to quite a fancy restaurant called ‘Era’ with amazing food / wine and service (they had someone there just to open the door for you and a lounge area to wait for your table- that’s how fancy it was.) we thought we would be spending a bit over budget but it all came to less than €20. Crazy!

    We thought we (well Stéphane) would brave the crazy Albanian driving and hire a car for a few days to visit other towns around Albania seen as it was so cheap! €35 for 3 days! We decided that getting comprehensive insurance and a sat nav would be a good idea so that bumped up the price a bit but still less than €20 a day each- not bad! It will get dropped off tomorrow after lunch so we will have the morning to explore a bit more of Tirana before we head off! :)    Read more

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